ned eyes, and struggled with a
terrible oppression to speak her name, Marietta was still sleeping
profoundly.

"Etta!" he gasped. "O, Etta!"

And Marietta heard the whispered name, and thrusting out her hands, as
if to tear away a physical bond, broke through the torpor that possessed
her, and stood upon her feet. She staggered, white and trembling, to
Jim's bedside, and there, in the faint light, she saw that he was dying.

"Etta, Etta," he whispered, "I want you!"

She sank upon her knees beside him, but the hand she folded in her own
was already lifeless.

Slowly the light increased in that dingy garret, until the sun shone
full upon the face of the Peak, fronting the single window of the
chamber in uncompassionate splendor. Occasional sounds of traffic came
up from the street below; the day had begun. And still Marietta knelt
beside the bed, clasping the hand she loved, with a passionate purpose
to prolong the mere moment of possession that was all that was left her
now, all it was worth being alive for. He wanted her, he wanted
her,--and oh, the years and years that he must wait for her, in that
strange, lonely, far-away heaven!

"Jim, Jim," she muttered from time to time, with a dry gasp in her
throat, that almost choked her; "Jim, O Jim!"

By-and-by, when the sun was high in the heavens, and all the world was
abroad, she got upon her feet, and went about the strange new business
that death puts upon the broken-hearted.

The day after the funeral was the third of April, and Marietta knew that
all her April bills were lying in the letterbox, the silent menace which
had seemed so terrible to her the other day. Well,--that at least was
nothing to her now. So much her heart-break had done for her, that all
the lesson of ruin she had conned through those horrible black hours,
when Jim was dying and she did not know it,--that lesson at least had
lost its meaning. Ruin could not hurt Jim now, and she?--she might even
find distraction in it,--find relief.

She went down into the dimly lighted shop, where the shades were closely
drawn in the door and in the broad show-window. In that strange midday
twilight, she gathered up her mail, and then she seated herself in her
old place behind the counter, and began the examination of it.

There were all the bills, just as she had anticipated; bills for food
and bills for medicine; bills for all those useless odds and ends which
made up her stock in trade, which she and